ABSTRACT
This chapter describes adolescent beliefs about and interpretations of a range of oral and written discourse. It examines adolescent beliefs about oral and written language. The study of beliefs is a relatively new and an undeveloped area of research. During the summer of 1993, adolescents participating in the San Antonio Jobs for Progress, Project SER, a summer youth employment training project, were selected for the present research. This summer, federally funded program pays low-income, urban adolescents to go to school and/or for work on given job sites in the city. The Director of Project SER, graduate students, and principal investigator selected real-world passages that adolescents might be exposed to through a variety of media. The adolescents may not have had driver’s education in school, or a license. Nevertheless, many of the adolescents regarded the passage as highly believable and true because it was written in the manual.
